This was primarily a sightseeing/photo trip but since Iceland Air allows
2 full-size pieces of luggage (yeah!) why not bring our wings?
Description of all the awesome landscapes, waterfalls, fjords,
volcanoes, hot springs, puffins, guillemots, bird cliffs, lambs and
horses will be in a different place; here just a short account of our
flying activities.
First flying stop was Vik where we met up with Grampa Dave, a Pemby (or
rather: international) pilot. He and his Vik pilot friends welcomed us
warmly with a party until 2:30 AM – rather hard to know when to go to
bed when it doesn’t get dark - and introduced us to one of their local
flying sites, the cliffs above a group of sea stacks called
Reynisdrangar. There we enjoyed a long ridge soaring session above
countless nesting fulmar birds and similarly countless tourists.
Iceland’s landscape looks like a dreamland for paragliding but many of
the great-looking hills and ridges line up the wrong direction and the
wind is 90 degrees cross to the take-off. Not a big surprise considering
how winds should behave in a fjord and most of Iceland’s coastline is
made up of fjords. In addition winds were often much too strong and
gusty for flying and changed in a hurry.
We had another sweet ridge soaring session in the desert/moonscape along
the northern ring road between Egilsstadir and Lake Myvatn and also got
the wings out for a short hike & sledride, a low dune soaring
session and some kiting. So one could almost call it a flying trip!
While Iceland wouldn’t be first on my list for a paragliding holiday;
getting in the air above some of the amazing sights was definitely one
of the highlights of the trip. There is a cool app/online site for wind
directions and flying sites (
http://hopp.la/ice/) but beware, the wind speeds are in m/s. For km/h multiply by 3.6 .
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| Flying near Vik |
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| Along the northern Ring Road |
